The CD Key Provided is currently in use (3.45)

Technical Support
1

After 15+ years of having not touched War3 ROC/TFT I decided to find my cd-keys from my old account (which I did by contacting support) and then installing the clients.

I created a new battle.net account (through warcraft 3) and proceeded to log in - only to get this error saying that my key is already in use.

I contacted technical support, and I am utterly disgusted by the way this was handled, effectively telling me that this is an issue that is not caused by myself, but an issue that they cannot fix and one that means that I need to re-purchase the game.

Parts of the Chat with GM Follow:

RAVENKURD 16:25:34

Yes it seems the key is in use this may be cause it was shared in the past , there are lots of old warcraft III accounts associated to it. Sadly in these cases there is nothing we can do I’m very sorry

YOU 16:25:52

What do you mean it was shared in the past

YOU 16:26:01

It’s never been shared with anyone but myself, but it’s true I had a lot of accounts

YOU 16:26:11

can’t you delete old accounts? I don’t have any of them in my memory anyway

YOU 16:26:27

Sounds preposterous that "too many accounts" is a thing in a game that literally used to allow unlimited accounts be created

RAVENKURD 16:27:09

The only thing I can see is that is being used and we are unable to manually take any action due to the old system with which we have no tool to interfere. I said lots not too many

RAVENKURD 16:27:46

With the legacy system basically we can only check but not actually do anything else manually

YOU 16:27:53

While I’m doing my best to understand this is not “your issue” per se, it’s kind of underhanded to say “Hey you have lots of accounts, we never told you but that means that now you need to buy the game a third time”

YOU 16:28:22

Can’t blizzard see how I am not to blame and actually allow me to play the game ? (New cd key or whatever, this shouldn’t be my issue)

YOU 16:28:47

Just because an old cd key is clogged in ways I could not foresee or was not warned about in any ToS, I can’t be forced to re-purchase

YOU 16:29:20

that’s way underhanded if I’m being brutally honest.

RAVENKURD 16:29:24

No the fact that there are lots of account is not an issue per se. It is though if one of those account is being used while you try to login since it would prevent you to do so. Sadly as I said there is nothing we can do I really wish I could help you here

RAVENKURD 16:32:59

I understand your point as I said in these cases we can only basically check what happens we cannot actually change anything so if for any reason you are unable to login due to the key being in use or other possible problems we cannot directly change that. If you want to provide feedback to the team please use the legacy forums here

YOU 16:33:19

So, to understand you clearly

YOU 16:33:25

you are adamant when saying that someone else is using my cd key

YOU 16:33:35

in essence blaming me that the cd-key was shared and now currently being used by someone else

RAVENKURD 16:33:37

Yes the key is in use

YOU 16:33:43

Please inform me where it’s logged in

YOU 16:33:48

It must be in some country

YOU 16:34:34

I do not believe it is, which is why I need this to be substantiated further. You just saying it is doesn’t change the fact that I did not share my cd key let alone recently. I used to play war 3 close to 15-20 years ago. Can you see how preposterous this sounds?

YOU 16:35:55

This boils down to me having purchased this game multiple times and you tell me that because of some glitch in your system I have to personally rectify that (issue of your system) by purchasing a different cd key

YOU 16:36:09

when the fact that the cd failed is clearly an issue I have no control over.

YOU 16:36:32

Please let’s escalate this to whichever manager can understand that I am being asked to pay 20-30 bucks to fix an issue with your system not working./

RAVENKURD 16:36:37

I cannot provide you such info I’m sorry. I did all I could to help you but sadly this is something we cannot in anyway fix for you. I know it’s disappointing as I said you can provide feedback to the devs on the classic forums

So, to understand this correctly, I’ve purchased the game, hadn’t used the game’s cd-key in over 10-15 years, and now that I want to use it it brings up some bogus error that suddenly means that I’m supposed to re-purchase?

How is this behavior justifiable, Blizzard?

How on earth does it make good business or customer support sense to pin issues of your systems on your loyal customers and transfer the burden of fixing those issues onto them, without even the slightest modicum of respect to them to clearly explain why this is happening?

I’m disgusted… I expected to play some warcraft 3 with my buddies today, feel some of that nostalgia, but all I got was a bad whiff of greed.

How do we fix this?

2 Likes
2

Woah that was a long conversation lol

I know you say you didnt share your cd key, but lets just say somehow somebody hacked your computer or was in your house and copied your cd key without you know, hypothetically speaking, if somebody is really using your cd key, its surprising they would be logged in every day 24 hours a day, if somebody really has you cd key they will log out at some point

In the past however, you could still be able to log in on a different server. If i give my cd key to a friend, we can both login on different servers, but I’m not sure if that is still possible in recent patch… anyway, my point is that if you try logging in to different servers, and all of them are being used, then there may be a possibility that you just have a different error and you should try completely uninstalling the game and reinstalling it, or even try a different pc

If that still doesnt work, then whats the big deal about spending $30 on reforged? you get access to the classic game for free with purchase

3

More likely someone generated a key. No one hacks computers to steal Warcraft III keys when they can just generate ones for free. After enough keys are generated, eventually they hit one that is valid and they use that. Either that or the publisher you got your key from was compromised at some stage so all keys they published and sold were stolen.

I would suggest buying Reforged in this case. Since you will have to buy Reforged anyway to get all advantages of Reforged and they also give you a complete new set of CD keys to play WC3 with until Reforged is released. The only people being shafted by the Reforged deal are people with functioning legacy keys as they effectively lose that part of the package.

1 Like
4

This is actually a good example why the CD key system was bad. I, too, bet my money on that, that someone generated a “hacked” key with a keygen and that generated key just happened to be yours.

Honestly, I’d take Blizz’s word for it. They can’t really do anything about it and they can’t be just handing new keys to everyone who say their key doesn’t work anymore. And it’s really a very old game. If you haven’t been using the key for almost two decades, I’d be more surprised if it did work. I remember running into the same problems once or twice too. Since old games usually actually required the CD just for multiplayer, I might have played my own game for a good while, until I decided to try going to play online, the key suddenly didn’t work. I remember having Half-Life and how it had a piece of paper inside with a CD key from internet because the game’s own CD key didn’t work. It happens (or happened).

As a loyal customer, supporting classics team and buying Reforged shouldn’t be a big problem. :wink:

5

Fair enough, but I am still surprised this “thief” is using the key 24 hours every day

6

Damn this probably is me. I think I am using a keygen right now for Public Test.

7

so you just admitted to piracy and theft

1 Like
8

i have same problem… original copy in my hands and blizzard say to me maybe u have other account or u share cd key? maybe BLIZZARD YOU ARE RETARD??? OR MAYBE U JUST LOW I.Q. dumb assistance

9

The only person to get angry at is the thief who stole your CD key from you. Blizzard cannot help with this as they are not the police. The police cannot help with this as the person likely lives in a far away country. One does not even know when the crime was committed, it could have happened a decade ago.

Best solution in this case is to buy Reforged.

10

best solution is dont buy anymore blizzard game not buy reforged, reforged is like a alpha game and waste a old game

1 Like
11

the ridiculous thing is that I wrote to the thief of the key and he immediately stopped using it. and I continued to use it until it is reforged exit. now I can no longer play because it is registered in the name of another. while I have the original copy in my hands of 2002.

12

They attached the key to their account first and hence stole it from you. They now own it, even if you originally brought it. This is nothing more than theft.

How did this happen? If you did not share the key with anyone then it is likely some kind of data breach at one of the printing factories. Blizzard sent them a list of valid CD key licences to use. This list could have been compromised by a data leak and either used by hackers directly, or sold to third party as an “legitimate CD Key” for money who then sold it on to new customers. If the printing house was corrupt they could have even double printed CD keys to make extra money.

This kind of theft is pretty common in the industry and happens with steam keys as well.